StevenToddIves
Registered User
This can only be based on a very short memory of past drafts. When you grade out guys who have the offensive results of Okhotyuk, very few of them reach the NHL. If you want to limit it to players drafted in the first 3 rounds, you won't do a ton better. It isn't that offensive production is *necessary* in the NHL, but rather that offensive production in lower leagues suggests the kind of ability with the puck that will allow a player to play in the league - plenty of guys go from being offense providers at the lower level to being one-dimensional in the NHL.
Great, ask them. Parayko was an overage pick but he put up offense in the year he was drafted. Brandon Carlo is a wildly overrated player around here. He's a fine mid-pairing D who provides almost no offense. The physical element is all about shots for and shots against. That's it. If a player doesn't positively influence those it's hard to be any good.
So you also are saying the Devils drafted for need. Drafting for need is generally bad - I will only endorse it in rare circumstances, and this is certainly not one of them.
You've been at this how many years and your assertion is that they are undervalued? I don't understand unless you just aren't seeing the results and only focus on prospects. The days of drafting the pure tomato cans in the first round are over, unfortunately for New Jersey, but where are these D around the NHL getting big ice time and providing massive value to their team? Carlo is one guy. I just searched for D who played 1200 minutes last year and sorted by PIM - the guys in the top 20 of PIM who I think you would describe as a 'physical, defensive defenseman' are Ian Cole, Darnell Nurse, Erik Gudbranson, Nikita Zadorov, Roman Polak, Scott Mayfield, Joel Edmundson, Tyler Myers, Robert Hagg, Radko Gudas, Josh Manson, Brenden Dillon.
Of these, Cole, Nurse, Gudbranson, Zadorov, and Myers were drafted in the 1st round.
Mayfield and Hagg were drafted in the 2nd round.
This doesn't strike me as these players being undervalued. Most of these are bottom-pairing guys. I like Gudas a lot and Dillon's pretty good but a lot of these players I don't think are very good. Then there's the giant penumbra of guys under this who were high-floor players who didn't make it at all or are fringe guys.
When I hear this about high floors for players drafted in the late rounds I get very skeptical. Misyul is the one guy I don't mind because I suspect there's value in the MHL because of how poorly scouted it is. The USNDP and the OHL, the notion of getting value there, I'm quite skeptical - everyone saw those. That said, I don't want high floors - I want high ceilings. Santini was a high-floor guy - great, the Devils got 100 games of below-average play out of him, then managed to move him.
I think this will all sound quite absurd in a few years. If anything, the Devils overreacted to what should be a non-existent 'trend'. The puck is the important thing and yeah they've got a lot of guys in the system who know what to do with it, but it doesn't mean they can go picking players high who don't seem to know that.
I can't say I judge physicality by amount of penalty minutes a player accrues. Again, that's an attempt to quantify the unquantifiable through numbers, something which does not work in hockey. In hockey, you need more metaphysical qualities than simply "shots for/shots against". While some of the players you mentioned are certainly better than they are given credit for by the analytics community (Nurse, Carlo, Manson) others are simply third-pairing D who like to hit (Hagg, Polak).
Two players who Case McCarthy reminds me of, for instance, are both Carolina Hurricanes: Brett Pesce (3rd round, 2013) and Jake Slavin (4th round, 2012). While they are not "physical" in the sense that they look all shift long for open ice hits, they both are big guys who clear creases and dominate forwards in the corners -- they are expert in separating the offensive player from the puck and then quickly getting the puck up ice. So, I would consider them "physical defensemen" more than any player who has patrolled the Devils blueline for years, despite low penalty minute totals.
For instance, Brett Pesce and Jake Slavin had fewer penalty minutes last year than Jake Gardiner, who is probably the softest and worst defensive defenseman in the entire NHL. How is it possible that two players like Pesce and Slavin who play such a heavy game have fewer penalties than a guy who will avoid contact at any cost? Simple -- Pesce and Slavin are rarely beat one-on-one, and they rarely need to grab a jersey or hook or trip to recover for mistakes, whereas a guy like Gardiner gets beat with regularity and then needs to recover from this by dragging the player who beat him down from behind.
Gardiner is a great example of how analytics falsely quantifies defensemen. In my opinion (and several people in NHL front offices would agree), if you flipped Gardiner to the Bruins and Carlo to the Leafs in that first-round series, the Leafs would win the series. Carlo shut down and punished Leafs forwards all series long, while Gardiner was an abject horror show, almost a liability every time he was on the ice. If you are an opposing forward on a one-on-one or in a corner or going after a rebound, who is the defenseman you would rather be competing against, Carlo or Gardiner? I mean, it's not even a debate -- it's no contest.
Hockey is about balance. I would no way go into a season as an NHL GM with a blueline of Carlo, Manson, Dillon, Zadorov, Pesce and Edmundson. But that being said, you'd have the same chance (zero) of winning the cup as a team with a blueline of Gardiner, Pysyk, Brodie, Gostisbehere and Honka. If you are going to have a high-end offensive D like Erik Karlsson, you are better off pairing him with a physical, defensive-minded guy. Damon Severson playing with Will Butcher is a pretty good defenseman. But when they put him with Darnell Nurse in the World Championships, Severson looked absolutely dominant.
Teams need a balanced blueline to win, plain and simple. Analytics cannot quantify this. Will Butcher needs to be paired with a defensive player, just as Case McCarthy will be the perfect partner for an offensive minded guy (Ty Smith). While I agree with you that drafting for need is bad, the Devils took two of the four defensive D (Misyul and McCarthy) far lower than where they deserved to go. I agree they reached a bit for Okhotyuk -- I would have loved Grewe or Legare there -- but overall the Devils draft has to be considered filled with high-value picks for their draft position (Misyul, McCarthy, Gritsyuk, Moynihan, Pasic).
All analyses aside, turn that frown upside down. The Devils did a great job this weekend, and the future is bright.